


Adulting

by lunarlychallenged



Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 13:34:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15144188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunarlychallenged/pseuds/lunarlychallenged
Summary: It's kind of nice to let Jack treat you like a kid, especially when you aren't acting like an adult.





	Adulting

“Jack is going to kill me,” Race said miserably.

“He won’t,” you said uneasily. Jack could be hard to predict. Sometimes he ran when you thought he would fight, and other days he picked battles that you thought weren’t worthwhile.

The two of you were hobbling up the stairs to Jack’s apartment. You were hobbling, anyway, and Race kept a hand on your elbow in case you wobbled. You wished that you could clean the drops of blood falling on the tiles, but you would only make a bigger mess of things.

“It’s my fault. We both knew that you weren’t ready, but I dragged you into this -”

“Go home, Race.” You were a little harsher than you intended. It was the effort of speaking while you climbed the stairs, not true blame, but Race didn’t know that. His face went heavy with hurt, so you gave his arm a gentle punch. “Not like that, kid. Jack can’t kill you if you aren’t here.”

Race looked at your legs, your palms, and frowned. “You sure? I should get you to the door.”

You shook your head. “I’ll call Jack so he has stuff ready. Hit the road. I’ll have him text you if I die of infected wounds.”

Race insisted on waiting until Jack answered his phone, so the two of you leaned against a wall.

“Y/N?” Jack sounded confused, but happy. “What’s up?”

“I just wanted to know if you have any band aids,” you said lightly.

“Hang on -” You heard the sound of opening cupboards and drawers. “Yeah, why?”

“I’m in the stairwell. I’ll need a few. See you in a sec.” You ended the call and raised an eyebrow at Race. “Satisfied? Good. Run like the wind, Bullseye.”

He was already heading down the flight of stairs. “I would be Woody, and you know it, Y/N.”

“That’s a load of crap, and you know it,” you called down to him. The journey up the stairs was harder without him there, but maybe that was just because Race gave you something else to focus on. The path up the stairs was one you made all the time, but you had never been so conscious of every step of the four flights of stairs.

You only had to wait a few seconds after knocking on Jack’s door before he opened it. His eyes roved over you, and it was an odd feeling. You were used to his appreciative gaze, but not his worried one.

The path of his eyes stuttered when he saw your skinned hands, but froze when he saw the tears in your jeans. Jack stared at the mess of your knees, all streams of blood and strips of skin peeling back. “Jesus, Y/N, what did you do?”

You shrugged. It would be so much easier if you could just say that you were okay, but you knew that your voice would waver. You had been feeling pretty good about it - you were handling the pain pretty well, and all - but then you saw Jack. You were okay until Jack asked you if you were okay. You were okay while your pants, torn though they may have been, masked the wreckage. You were okay, but now you weren’t.

“Nothing, really,” you said thickly. “Aren’t you going to invite me inside?”

He blinked, and the haze of surprise receded. “Right. Right, yeah, let’s clean you up.”

Jack helped you limp to the bathroom, where he perched you on the edge of the bathtub. You bit the inside of your cheek to swallow the keening whine that surfaced when he cut away the knees of your jeans. 

“They’re a lost cause already,” he said. He was probably right. Blood was hard enough to wash out, and it wasn’t worth it with the gaping holes. He brushed his fingers over a particularly loose bit of skin and frowned when you hissed. “Sorry. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but there’s no way to fix this without hurting you a little.”

You didn’t complain, but when he grabbed your hand to squeeze it, you didn’t let go. He fumbled to handle a bottle of hydrogen peroxide with his free hand, and he had to balance it on his knee while he reached for a washcloth, but he never pulled away. He would brush his fingers over your knuckles, and he occasionally pressed a kiss into your hand when he felt you tense.

“Tell me what happened,” he finally said. He had decided to wrap your legs up in bandages instead of using band aids, and he had moved on to picking bits of gravel out of your hands.

“I was trying to skateboard,” you said dismissively. “I just took on a ramp that was a little too big.”

“You don’t have a skateboard.”

You cringed. There was no way to keep Race out of it now, not unless you were going to lie. “I was with Race.” He pulled out a sharp piece of gravel, and you winced. 

He pressed a kiss into your palm, not at all bothered by the blood on his lips when he pulled away. “That explains it all.” His voice was still soft, and you thanked your lucky stars for the severity of the wounds. If they had been smaller, he would have been angry at Race.

Jack was no fool, so he knew that Race had pushed you to try out the bigger pipes at the skatepark. Race had been teaching you to skateboard, since you had always wanted to learn and he was kind of incredible at it. He knew that you weren’t anywhere near good enough to tackle those, but Race was convincing when he wanted to be. You took the halfpipe, and you wiped out spectacularly. You skidded to your hands and knees, and the ground ate more of them than it left.

“I shouldn’t have tried it,” you said lightly. “I’m not a kid anymore. I’m too old for this.”

“You aren’t too old for anything,” he immediately said. “That doesn’t mean that you should try something dangerous if you aren’t ready,” he admitted after a second.

“I know.” A little bit of your exhaustion crept into your voice. You were so tired, and it was making you almost weepy. “Can we just sit for a while?”

“Sure,” he said gently. Jack pulled you off the tub and into his lap, wrapping his arms around you. He rocked back and forth a little, as though he was rocking you to sleep. If he kept at it long enough, he probably would.

“If we’re going to sit like this,” you joked, “I should probably take back what I said about not being a kid anymore.”

“You’re right. We should be acting like adults. Let’s go to a fancy restaurant and drink wine.”

You smiled into his shoulder. “Or we could sit at a cafe with newspapers.”

He was pressing lazy, thoughtless kisses into your hair, your neck, your shoulder. “We could go sit in a waiting room and read magazines.”

You wrinkled your nose. “Gross. Let’s pretend to be kids, then.”

“I think I actually have juice boxes in the fridge,” he said thoughtfully. “Want one?”

You laughed. “Absolutely. Maybe we could sit here for a minute longer, though.” The room was cramped, the floor was frigid, and you loved being this close to Jack.

“Sure,” he agreed. He sighed into you neck, not complaining about the sweat or the dirt you were sure was there. “As long as you want.”


End file.
